


To Safety

by fragilelittleteacup



Category: Elementary (TV)
Genre: (but a warning for mentions), (no drug use takes place in this fic), Corpses, Drug Addiction, Fix-It, Friendship, Platonic Relationships, Season 3 Finale, Violence, everyone is okay and no one relapses, it's aaaaaall okay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-10
Updated: 2016-05-10
Packaged: 2018-06-07 14:24:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 531
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6808846
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fragilelittleteacup/pseuds/fragilelittleteacup
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AU: Sherlock didn't relapse.</p><p>(a short fix-it written when I first watched the s3 finale)</p>
            </blockquote>





	To Safety

They found him at the mouth of a railway, covered in the shadow of a bridge. His face was thick with bruises, and he sat slumped, shoulders rounded. His jacket was missing, and his shirt was torn. Blood seeped from his skin, mixing with his tattoos, making the sight even more violent.

Joan’s steps faltered as she approached him, Marcus and Gregson following at a distance. Her eyes desperately travelled up and down him, but she found no evidence he hadn’t relapsed; his skin was pale, made worse by the bruising, and his eyes were empty, devoid of the spark that made him so quintessentially _Sherlock._ The intensity of him was receded, disappeared- when he was still, usually, he was a firework waiting to go off, his mind pounding away with deduction after deduction. But she couldn’t see any life before her.

He was empty.

“…Sherlock?” Joan knelt slowly before him. The railway stones pressed into her painfully. She didn’t care.

“I found her.” He spoke slowly. There was nothing in his voice. It was quiet, flat, and hoarse. “Oscar’s sister. She’s behind me, to the left.”

Joan looked up, spied the white corpse, with dead eyes and stringy blonde hair. That explained the smell. Marcus went to investigate, and Gregson stood, hands in his pockets, waiting with a carefully controlled look of worry on his face.

“Are you alright, Sherlock?” There were lots of ways she could’ve asked that question.

Sherlock didn’t reply.

Marcus returned to her side. “She’s been dead for at least two days. Maybe more.”

“So,” Gregson spoke low. “, he lied? This Oscar guy?”

“It was a ruse.” Sherlock’s voice was slow. The same voice he’d used when he’d been accused of killing Mrs Marino. He was in another world, and his eyes were unfocussed. “It was never about his sister.”

Joan felt her stomach drop. “It was about you.”

Sherlock nodded.

For a while, no one spoke.

“He gave me heroin.”

Joan didn’t ask. She couldn’t.

“I didn’t…” His voice shook. “I couldn’t- I couldn’t take it. I thought- I thought of you, Watson, and I couldn’t pardon doing that. After all the- the meetings, the… After _everything_ , I couldn’t-”

Relief.

It made her dizzy.

He looked up at her, then, and his eyes were so fixed on her that she knew there was nothing else. She was his everything. She was the force that tied him to the world. The reason he hadn’t taken that heroin. She thought of him, drugs in his hands, and imagined him saying no. The willpower that must’ve taken. It was enormous, gigantic- that kind of devotion. That connection. It was the kind of thing she’d have feared once. But not now.

She reached out, took one of his hands.

 “I want to go home.” He whispered.

She smiled. There were tears in her eyes, and the wind was cold. He was staring up at her with all the love she’d ever know. “Good idea.”

He smiled too, broken and wonky, and the three of them helped him stand slowly. Marcus’ hand on his back, Gregson hovering proactively behind them, Joan holding him around the waist.

And he was safe.


End file.
